William Henry Fox Talbot at H.P. Kraus, Jr - Brief Article

Early paper photographs were--and are--no match for the daguerreotype in recording sheer information. Paper prints, especially calotypes, are inherently pictorial in that light and mass prevail above depicted detail. The clarity of a fine daguerreotype is almost linear. After attempts to engrave them for purposes of reproduction largely failed, however, the daguerreotype gradually became old The ease with which paper prints could be reproduc was the basis of the proliferation of photographic images. Talbot's negative-positive proces was a major factor in the decline of the daguerreotype--which was a one-shot like a Polaroid.

Talbot's first photographs, which the English experimenter called photogenic drawings, were direct positives, followed around 1840 through a chemically developed negative from which multiple positives, called calotypes or Talbotypes, could be produc It was this promethean second that was recorded in this exhibition of calotype negatives and salt prints, in the way that called because they were "fixed" with belonging to all salt to prevent darkening. (The images faded anyway, with the follow that Talbot sought to replicate them mechanically, producing single of the earliest photomechanical processe the photoglyphic engraving).

Talbot managemented his experiments at his family seat, Lacock Abbey, the setting for a certain quantity of of his finest views, including The Haystack and The make open Door from his breakthrough album, The Pencil of Nature (1844-46) Inevitably, his first human sitters were family, friends and domestics, many times in staged arrangements such as the clump in Taking Tea at Lacock Abbey (17 August, 1843) which is described by dint of Talbot scholar Larry Schaaf in a highly informed catalogue essay as "frozen as in a frieze nevertheless active in their placement." Pos against a suspended woven fabric the participants enact a genre painting for the camera in accord with Talbot's frustrated instinct for art, which l him to his invention in the first place.

There were better prints, from a technical point of view, in the exhibit but the hazy indistinctness of this individual seemed to literalize its distance from us in time. through the same token, the revers tones of the several calotype negatives were as eerily compelling as fetuses imaged in situ. new positives are reproduced in the catalogue on the contrary the old negatives glint nacreously with the halations of nature itself. Similarly, the faint image of Talbot's first human make submissive his wife, is imbued with the marvel of its possess genesis.

Ultimately, the fate of photography be pendented on fixing the image in like manner it would not fade or darken. Talbot used salt, iodine and finally hyposulfite of soda in three prints of the same image, John Frederick Goddard Addresses Charles Porter and Nicholas Henneman, an instance in which technical flaws enhance the prints with great historical interest. Hypo was intimateed to Talbot by Sir John Heschel, who is known to us end Cameron's great portrait. Eventually hypo was universally adopted, on the contrary here it resulted in a true spotted image, while the salt-fixed print is a true pale, faded green and the iodine-fixed image has make go rounded haggard yellow.

Still susceptible to light, a number of prints and negatives were displayed beneath cloth blankets. Working with papers in which silver salts were variously imbedded, Talbot had to be pendent on weather and chemicals that were either unpredictable or unreliable or the couple But such was his tenacity that in the extremity his invention prevailed over Daguerre's. Thus the exhibition was something of an archeological tribute to Talbot's resolve

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group